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VERIDIA + Amy Lee of Evanescence Release Video For “I’ll Never Be Ready”

Veridia are releasing an exclusive performance of “I’ll Never Be Ready” off their latest album The Beast You Feed. The emotional track about grieving and loss features Evanescence’s Amy Lee on piano and backing vocals. Lee played the track with Veridia for the first time at the latter’s album release party at Nashville’s Analog.

Veridia frontwoman Deena Jakoub wrote the song as her dad was dying from renal disease. Penned a year before his death, Jakoub used the song to cope with the oncoming loss and to reframe her headspace.

“After a long wait for a kidney transplant, his body rejected the gifted kidney less than a year later,” Jakoub says. “I was sobbing in the studio, trying to write about the inevitable loss I was facing, and this song metaphorically slapped me into awareness that he was still here.”

Jakoub sang the song for the first time at her father’s hospital bedside. She later played the rough studio recording at his memorial, both in the States and in Egypt where he was buried. Only a few months later, Veridia went to record the studio album.

“‘I’ll Never Be Ready’ was the first song I recorded vocally, since I knew it would be difficult to get through,” Jakoub says.

Jakoub says the song was “too intimate” for a full band recording, so drummer Kyle Levy added soft percussion, and they brought in a cellist. Even then, Jakoub felt the song wasn’t complete and reached out to Lee, who quickly got on board.

“It felt like we were divinely brought together to walk through and perform through those deep emotions,” Jakoub says. “She played the song of my soul that I could not find the words to sing.”

Jakoub met Lee when Evanescence hand picked Veridia to open their 2016 tour. Lee resonated with the lyrics and agreed to record piano for the song. She even flew in to the band’s album release party to perform the song with the full band.

“There are things in this world that are cruel and unfair, and there are also things in this world that are impossibly beautiful,” Lee says. “Reaching out and finding someone else in the darkness lights up the one thing that lives forever. Love. And to quote the words that hold my heart, ‘I’ll never forget how much I was loved.’”